Winter Song
by LyricalRiot
Summary: TROS SPOILERS - Brief, introspective one-shot wherein Rey struggles with the fallout of what happened on Exegol.


This is my way of mourning what happened in TROS. It's just a one-shot. At least for now.

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**Winter Song**

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Rey stares up at the transparent glass arching over her little room, watching the snow drift from heavy gray clouds obscuring the night. The flakes remind her of stars, falling in slow-motion from an endless cosmos. Like the galaxy itself is crumbling around her.

Her heart squeezes tight and her breath catches in the heavy prison of her chest.

"Be with me," she whispers into the luminous night.

Such a strange thing, snow. Such a strange place for her friends to come to celebrate their victory. But Poe and Zorri said this was one of the best lodges in the galaxy where one could get away from everything and drink to your hearts' content. They all came. Finn and Rose and Connix and that new girl Jannah. They came to play in the snow and drink and revel in a few days where they don't have to think about anything except being perfectly happy.

Rey met them here, after Tattooine. She stayed for sunset, and then as soon as night fell and the crushing silence of sand enveloped her again, she fled. She came to where they were, knowing that being in the midst of her friends is the only way to stay ahead of the emotions chasing her.

But it isn't working.

"Be with me," she whispers again.

Everyone else is asleep now, in their own glass bubbles spaced out over the lodge grounds. Glass tunnels lead from the rooms to the central hub where guests eat and drink and socialize, but none of her people are there now. Not at this lonely hour.

Snowflakes melt against the top of her dome, collecting on the ground in a vast landscape of white. It's like sand, Rey decides. Colder and wetter, but just as forlorn. Just as hostile. Nothing can grow beneath that beautiful, desolate blanket. The only thing she enjoys about it is how mellow it renders the dark. The white world outside reflects any light, making it easy to see, even in this moonless, starless space. As easy as daylight.

It reminds her of Starkiller Base. The first time she'd experienced snow, biting and frosty and cruel.

It reminds her of him.

A swell of pain chokes her and she closes her eyes, a tear sliding down the side of her head.

"Be with me," she pleads, more tears coming now, unbidden.

It was a mistake to come here. She has winter in her heart — she doesn't need winter all around her too. The warmth of her friends can't melt the snow collecting in the giant hole inside her chest.

She tries to access that well of serenity that had allowed her to commune with the Force ancestors before, but there is too much pain. Too much hurt. She can't find serenity at all.

It isn't fair. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. He finally came to her as himself. As Ben. At last. He held her. He put his hand on her, and he gave her his warmth, his light. He called her back. He saved her. And she finally let herself do what she wanted to do all this time. It was supposed to be the start of something they'd both flinched away from before but were ready to face now. The beginning, not the end.

The end of Ben.

She rolls over, curling herself up into a small ball, pressing her fists into her eyes and letting the grief sweep over her in a consuming wave.

_Be with me_, she thinks miserably, unable to give voice to the words anymore.

She doesn't understand how it had gone so wrong. The bond she shared with Ben, so powerful it could bring forth life, was defiled and used to fully restore that disgusting wretch. And Rey can't fathom it. She can't comprehend how that connection between them could have been so strong and good and precious, only to be used for something as vile as that. They hadn't even been given a chance to explore the extent of their power together before it was abused and then silenced forever.

She can't find comfort in her empty room. Agony wells up in her heart at the stillness. She doesn't want to be here. She wants to flee, to find some mission, some task to keep her so occupied she can't think or feel or breathe.

_Be with me!_

It had worked once. They'd come. Those Jedi. Those predecessors in the Force. They listened when she needed them, and they gave her strength so she could defeat the Emperor — and she was grateful — but a questions plagues her now which she cannot shake. She doesn't want it, tries to push it away, but it strikes her heart like a hot iron even as she searches for any feeling of those beings on the other side. Why did they not hear Ben? How many times had he asked his grandfather for guidance, and received silence? He'd hungered for any meaningful connection to his family for so long. Wouldn't a little compassionate interference when he was struggling against the dark have changed everything in his life? And when he was tossed into that pit, why did they not come to him and strengthen _him_ instead of her?

He was the Skywalker, not her. He was the one whose story this is. She is…she is nothing. They should have come to him. Why did they abandon him? Or if he alone could not do it, why didn't they strengthen both halves of the dyad, sharing the necessary strength between the two of them so neither one used up all their own life force? Why did he have to atone for his sad, tortured existence with his life?

Maybe all these thoughts are why they are silent now. Maybe they sense her accusations. Her resentment. Her blame. And they will not commune with her again until she regains some sense of peace.

But how can she do that?

She buried her peace in the sand on Tattooine. She is sorrow now, and pain, half of her soul is missing.

Her friends can't ease this sting. They don't even know she needs them to. She hides it well, but her love for them can only distract her for a moment, and then she is alone again, and it all returns in a tidal wave.

She doesn't want to commune with the ancestors anyway. It isn't really them that she's calling for, if she's being honest with herself. What does she want them to say? Does she want them to tell her it will be alright? Probably they'd just tell her to get over it, to be strong, to be the paragon of the Jedi that they'd turned her into. They'd tell her that this is why love is forbidden, because it leads to worlds of pain and crippling weakness.

As if her feelings for Ben had ever been part of her plan. As if she hadn't resisted the pull his heart had over hers every step of the way. As if she hadn't tried not to get in this deep. She hadn't fucking chosen this. The Force connected them and the Force let them see into each other's stupid lonely souls and so if anyone is to blame for this pain it is the Force itself. Or maybe Ben, because Ben was the one who had decided to be gentle when she was still busy trying to hate him.

So damn those Jedi forbearers. They can ignore her pleas, she doesn't want their comfort now. She only wants to feel a glimpse of one person on the other side.

She only wants Ben.

"Be with me," she begs him, her voice wavering and small.

Sometimes she thinks she can feel him, all around her, everywhere except where she needs him. Where she can touch him and look into his black eyes again and tell him all the things she should have said.

About how she wants him — has always wanted him, but feared the person he was trying to be was stronger than the person she saw inside him. About how it killed her to leave him on the Supremacy. To deny his outstretched hand and his broken plea. About how she hasn't stopped thinking about that moment for one day since it happened, and she will probably still think about it for the rest of her life, just as she will always think about that kiss.

Stars, that kiss.

But for as many times as she asks, she remains alone in her little snow bubble, only the sound of her weeping to disturb the stillness.

Ben isn't coming.

_You're a liar_, she thinks accusingly at his memory. _You said you never lied to me, but that too was a lie._

His eyes, so dark and soft and full of an understanding so deep it took her breath away when he said with uncharacteristic gentleness, "You're not alone."

Ashes. Ashes and snow now, those words, drifting around her like the embers of Snoke's throne room, beautiful but meaningless.

In the morning she will rally. Everything is worse at night anyway. It won't seem so hopeless and raw in the daylight. She'll put on her happy, plucky Rey face and go join her friends and pretend that she is as euphoric as they are that they won. She'll figure out her next step and throw herself into it with all the confidence and strength that they, and she, expect from her. She will be calm and peaceful, as if she's accepted the will of the Force and everything is fine. But inside, she'll be a withered husk, miserable in the knowledge that their victory had come at too high a cost. Han, Luke, Leia, and Ben. All of them — gone. All of them taken from her to pay the price of the galaxy's freedom.

Awash in this ache, she runs out of tears and fades into something that isn't sleep, but isn't wakefulness either. She stares, thoughts numb and vacant, until finally sleep takes her into blessed oblivion.

Sometime in the night she dreams of him crawling into bed beside her, taking her into his arms, holding her tight to his chest. She can feel his powerful heart against her, beating life into both of them. The dyad made whole.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and she imagines the sincerity, and sweetness, in those words.

"Be with me," she pleads.

"I will," he says.

She wants to believe him. "Please, Ben, be here."

He pulls her in, tighter still. "I will find a way back to you. Rey, I promise."

In the dream, she is too overcome for words, so she just weeps anew, and he holds her with all the infinite tenderness she craved from him in life. When she wakes, it all lingers for a brief moment, still held suspended in her mind as if it is more than a dream. As if it is real. And then it fades, and when she sits up and looked around the dazzling silver morning, all that is left of it is a faint trace of his smell.

She expels a long breath.

Time to set her grief and mourning into that secret box in her heart where she keeps her most private memories. Where she keeps that kiss.

Time to breathe deep and face another day.


End file.
